


Link

by DameRuth



Series: Bliss [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:36:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24427378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: The story of how a certain Class II somatic/empathic linkage was forged in the first place. AU Rose/Jack/Nine OT3 -- story begins just after "Boom Town," everything having followed canon till this point.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Bliss [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078
Kudos: 35





	1. Tension

**Author's Note:**

> I'm continuing to import my Teaspoon content here - this is my first shot at importing a chaptered work, so sorry for any formatting issues. Originally posted 2007.06.27.
> 
> At this point, my original author's note is moderately hilarious, but included here for completeness:
> 
> "Ratings may go up for later chapters. I'm not fond of writing smut, as a rule (for stylistic rather than content issues), but this 'verse seems particularly condusive to things I Wouldn't Normally Write, so . . ."
> 
> Aw, it's Baby Writer's First Smut. :) So be kind. ;)

Rose looked down at her hand, and wondered when it had stopped belonging to her.  
  
That’s what it felt like — a stranger’s hand. Too small, too thin, too delicate, attached to wrists as light as a bird’s. Odd thing was, she’d started working out lately in the TARDIS gym, since physical fitness was an obvious benefit when one was jeopardy-friendly, and she’d _been_ pleased at the way her arms and hands were strengthening up.  
  
She was sitting on the jump seat in the control room, legs folded up beneath her, with a paperback book tented open, forgotten, on her topmost knee. She shivered, conflicting feelings and impulses running just beneath her skin, which felt too tight, itchy, wrong . . .  
  
It hadn’t been a bad day, or anything. They’d taken Blon-the-Egg back to Raxacoricofallapatorious, and gotten her safely situated in an orphanage. The Doctor’d concocted a story of a distress call, a lone escape pod containing only an egg, and a lot of vagueness about when and where the events had all taken place. The Raxacorians (as they called themselves) had been suspicious, but hadn’t quite been willing to turn down a child/egg in obvious need, so they’d allowed the Doctor to fill out reams of forms, and then leave Blon to her own people.  
  
It had been _odd_ , that was for sure — all those baby-faced green giants, going about perfectly normal office tasks, a world of ordinary bureaucrats and officials. Rose had to remind herself that the murderous Slitheen family she was familiar with represented the anomaly — these ordinary people were the everyday reality for the species.  
  
So, it had been a rather tiring day, as it always was when there was a lot of paperwork and standing in line involved, but it hadn’t been scary (once she got over feeling like every Raxacorian she saw was getting ready to eat her), and it hadn’t been upsetting, and there was _no reason_ for her to be feeling the way she was . . .  
  
Well, there were reasons, but not sufficient ones.  
  
Sexual frustration. She was used to that one — what with living every day between two highly attractive blokes who had to stay Just Friends because of their unique circumstances. Yeah, it was hard some days, but she knew how to deal with it. Though, admittedly, she’d sure been hoping for more out of her visit with Mickey, to help in that regard.  
  
Mickey. That visit certainly hadn’t gone well. She was still smarting from that — a nasty mash-up of hurt and anger and betrayal and guilt. What was worst was the sneaking suspicion that she’d been the one in the wrong, even if it was Mickey who'd gone running around with Trishia Delaney. Not good — but it shouldn’t be sending her off the deep end like this.  
  
Hormones. In expectation of meeting up again with Mickey, she’d broken into her stash of birth control pills. Messing with her hormones like that _might_ go a little way towards shifting her mood around, but she was pretty good at understanding when she was experiencing genuine emotion, as opposed to chemical imbalances.  
  
Stress. It wasn’t like running for your life every few days (in personal, linear time) didn’t get stressful. But, again, she’d learned to sense when that was affecting her thoughts and feelings . . . and this didn’t seem quite like that.  
  
God, it was like her skin didn’t _fit_ her anymore . . .  
  
Jack was there in the control room with her, fiddling with some bit of the control panel. Not actually working on it or fixing, it, just . . . fiddling.  
  
Rose didn’t know how she knew that, but she did — same as she knew that the reason she was still sitting here, so late in the “evening” was that she couldn’t bring herself to go to her room and toss and turn alone in her bed. So, she stayed up and sat in the jump seat, seeking even Jack’s unusually taciturn presence.  
  
It was the same for him, tonight, which was why _he_ was here.  
  
There’d been a few nights like this before, lately -- everyone out of sorts, rubbing each other the wrong way with their mere presence, but still seeking each others’ company. Nothing like this strong, though . . . and each time, before, it had been all over the by the morning, left forgotten and undiscussed by mutual, silent consent.  
  
Rose wasn’t sure it would work like that this time, though.  
  
Suddenly there was the _clang_ of metal on metal, as Jack fumbled a tool and dropped it. His hands were clumsy tonight, the fingers too long, the palms too broad, feeling like a stranger’s . . .  
  
“Shit,” he snarled under his breath, and Rose heard it from across the room. “Goddamn sonovabitch . . .” It was very out of character for him, since he tended to respect the attitude of both the Doctor and the TARDIS regarding foul language, but he didn’t seem to care tonight.  
  
The TARDIS — that was another potential source of all this, since the timeship got inside one’s head. Thing was, Rose was familiar with that subtle golden presence by now, and this wasn’t her. In fact, if anything, the TARDIS was being remarkably unobtrusive right then, lying low and quiet in the background.  
  
Rose closed her eyes and rested her head back against the back of the seat.  
  
The Doctor was off somewhere, deep in the TARDIS, but he was unhappy. He’d covered it well, but his time with Blon had shaken him. The Slitheen had been fighting for her life, with every subtle weapon of her intellect and perception — and she’d been good. She’d used her words like scalpels, to strip away the Doctor’s protections, to slice open old wounds, and leave them bleeding sluggishly and painfully . . .  
  
And somehow Rose knew this.  
  
Jack cursed again, and gave up even the pretense of work, dropping the wrench he’d been trying to use back into the toolbox. He gripped the edge of the console in both hands, and shivered.  
  
He was scared — scared of the strangeness, same as Rose was . . . and worse, he was afraid of losing something he hadn’t even known could exist until a few months ago, a home he’d never even imagined, much less believed he’d find. Keeping that home required a delicate balancing act, and he was constantly afraid of mis-stepping . . . and now _this_ — whatever the hell it was — eating at him, pulling him in directions he didn’t even understand, threatening that fragile equilibrium . . .  
  
Rose shivered with him, and bit back a scream of frustration. She should probably be scared, she thought dimly, but she was too distracted. Angrily, she clenched her fist, hard enough for the nails to bite deeply, draw blood . . .  
  
Jack was across the space between them in two bounds, gripping her wrist.  
  
“Don’t . . . !” he started to snarl . . . and then gasped.  
  
Rose gasped, too, but not from pain.  
  
The minute Jack touched her, it was amazing — like cool water washing over fevered skin, like the moment painkilling drugs kicked in and gave relief, and it filled her whole body.  
  
Muscles she didn’t even know were tense unknotted, and she opened her eyes to meet Jack’s. He looked terrified and elated, a mirror of her own feelings.  
  
Together, they took their first deep breaths in over an hour.  
  
( _Confused/scared/what?_ ) Rose “heard” from Jack, as clearly as if he’d spoken to her, but without words, only concepts.  
  
She replied with confusion to match his, unable to articulate concepts, but wrapping him in a wash of color and feeling. He closed his eyes, exhaling deeply, and Rose followed suit, feeling the resonance between them. But it was still wrong, still incomplete . . . still missing a vital piece.  
  
That missing piece had felt their contact, though, and was currently sweeping towards them through the ship’s corridors, a sensation like a shift in barometric pressure, the first swirl of air movement when the weather begins to shift . . .  
  
Jack and Rose both looked up a fraction of an instant before the Doctor, wearing an expression as grim as the end of the world, strode into the room and stopped, glaring at them.  



	2. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first inkling for Rose and Jack of what's happening.

“Dammit, Doctor, what’s going _on_?” Jack snapped, sounding angry, but with multiple layers of emotion layered beneath — scared, confused, and looking to the Doctor for answers.  
  
“You know don’t you,” Rose added, and it wasn’t a question.  
  
Unconsciously, Jack’s hand shifted on Rose’s wrist, and she moved with him so they were holding hands, in a gesture of solidarity and comfort.  
  
The Doctor didn’t answer immediately, but he began to walk towards them — obliquely, as if moving to circle them, rather than approach closely. There was a weird, controlled grace to his movements, very different from his usual careless demeanor. He looked phenomenally angry, but as with Jack, that was merely the surface veneer over a complex collection of feelings.  
  
He stopped, a good two arms-lengths away from them, and his eyes, gone dark and closed, flickered to their joined hands.  
  
At the same time, the two humans both started when a wave of . . . something dark and inquisitive washed through and past them, searching, analyzing . . .  
  
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing he said, voice tight.  
  
“Thanks!” Rose gasped, sarcasm edging her tone. “Be nice t’ know what _for_!”  
  
( _Agreement/query/answer!_ ) from Jack followed her words, supporting them. Rose winced slightly from the intensity of it, and threw up a protective wash of harsh orange that made Jack flinch.  
  
( _Sorry_ ) she told him with a wash of soothing blue — the entire exchange taking only a fraction of a second, but clearly defined and comprehensible nonetheless.  
  
The Doctor, following along, looked, if possible, even grimmer.  
  
“I didn’t think it’d go this far,” he said, and got a frustrated, concerted ( _What?!_ ) back in return.  
  
He brushed the force of it easily aside, but continued speaking. “There’s a . . . link forming between us. Empathic, feels like somatic, too . . .”  
  
“In English?” Rose asked, gritting her teeth and working on staying coherent.  
  
At the same time, Jack protested, “A link? But that’s crazy — only a few species are capable of forming them . . .”  
  
“Time Lords bein’ among that number,” the Doctor told him, irony weaving through his words.  
  
“But _we’re_ human . . .” Jack protested.  
  
“Yeah, got that, thanks,” the Doctor replied, sounding closer to his everyday self than he had so far. “That’s why I thought it wouldn’t take. Thought it was a fluke and been waitin’ for it to die off, but it hasn’t, it’s just gotten stronger . . .”  
  
“Oi! Dumb twenty-first century ape over here,” Rose said, flaring with flame-orange to match the frustrated tone of her words. “What kinda link are we talkin’ about here?”  
  
“Empathy,” Jack responded, before the Doctor could speak. “Like telepathy, but emotions — feelings and sensations, not words and images. Sometimes, individuals of a particular species will form a permanent link to one another, but it has to be just the right circumstances . . .”  
  
“And since we’re human, and he’s not, this shouldn’t be happenin’?” Rose filled in.  
  
“Got it in one,” Jack told her, eyeing the Doctor warily. The Time Lord had started walking again, still circling them, spiralling a little closer as he went.  
  
“Wait! Is this why we’ve been feelin’ weird, all these times” Rose shot an intensified version of the out-of-sorts feeling at the others, a reflex she didn’t understand even as she was doing it, “is that this link?”  
  
“Yes,” the Doctor told her.  
  
“An’ you didn’t _say_ anythin’ to us?” Rose flared, a pure bolt of blood-red indignation accompanying the words. “Just thought it’d go away?”  
  
Jack sent a shiver of understanding down the link, followed by his own burst of indignation ( _Thought I was crazy/all this time/not so?!_ )  
  
“Quiet!” ( _Control/keep it down!_ ) he added, and both Rose and Jack jerked back physically from what had been a completely non-physical rebuke.  
  
“Yeah, I did. Thought ignorin’ it was the best way to keep it from reaching . . . this point.” The Doctor came to a halt as he spoke, standing in front of his two human companions, now only about an arm’s length away.  
  
“Well now we’re here,” Rose said, breathing deeply to keep focused. “What do we do? How do we make it stop?”  
  
“We don’t,” the Doctor told her, his voice flat, but with a wide wash of emotions behind it — unhappiness, sorrow, grief . . . loneliness. “All we can do is separate.”  
  
Shock, then, ( _No!_ ), a solid blast of refusal, Rose and Jack reflexively tightening their grip on each other to the point where the Doctor’s hand, at his side, curled in an unconscious echo of the gesture.  
  
He took a deep breath, and kept going. “Separatin’s the only way to break this, and it’s at a point where it has to be broken or accepted — otherwise it’ll stay like this, and that’s a fast track to a padded room . . .”  
  
He turned toward the console, already plotting coordinates, when a hand grabbed his arm and spun him around. _Jack_ , was his first thought, the Captain acting out the role of testosterone-fuelled human male.  
  
But it was Rose; even without the vivid sparks and flares through the nascent link, he could easily have read her anger in her flushed cheeks and snapping brown eyes.  
  
She left her hand gripping his arm, and the link shivered to new life from the contact — but only faintly, the thick leather of his habitual coat acting yet again as armor, of a sort. It was still infinitely distracting — not the least for how good it felt . . .  
  
“What d’you mean, ‘broken _or_ accepted,’” she asked fiercely, making him regret his unguarded choice of words. “Y’ mean we got options here?”  
  
He glared at her, letting her anger and his combine to fuel his determination, even as the touch of her hand was working hard to erode it.  
  
“This is the last point at which we can break this link voluntarily,” he gritted out, enunciating each word carefully. “Beyond this, an accepted link becomes permanent.”  
  
“And that’s a bad thing?” He was looking down at her, but it seemed strange to be doing so — her personality was flaring up so strongly, she seemed larger than she was.  
  
“Yes!” he snapped — but she was too close, and the link revealed the half-truth.  
  
Her lips thinned down. “Care to elaborate?” she asked, enunciating as carefully as he had. He moved to pull his arm away from her . . . but before he could, Jack’s hand was on his arm, too, holding him where he was, Jack’s hand was on Rose’s shoulder, and the circuit was complete.  
  
The shock of it was astonishing. Jack spoke first, and his voice was, incredibly, as steady as if he were discussing the weather.  
  
“Yes, Doctor, I’d love to hear it, too,” he says.  



	3. Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little more angst to spice things up -- definitely more to come. ;)

The Doctor sucked in a deep breath, partly to remind himself which set of lungs was his, and said, more accurately, “An accepted link is a permanent thing, for as long as the people in it are alive — and it’s a total link, no holdin’ back.” He met Rose’s gaze, giving her an intimation of just what he meant down their connection.  
  
Her eyes widened, but, incredibly, a smile tugged at her lips. “An’ I repeat — that’s a bad thing?”  
  
“You have no idea what it would mean,” he told her, angry, and feeling suddenly out of his depth. It didn’t help to feel Jack watching, a measuring, perceptive presence, holding his peace for the moment but by no means disengaged. They were human, a fraction of his age, but he found his age and experience wasn’t near as much of an advantage as he would have thought.  
  
It was the link, he realized — for all practical purposes, Rose and Jack had _already_ accepted it without even understanding what they were doing, and were drawing off each other’s strength with the weird synergy typical of such a connection. Together, they were much, much more powerful than they were alone.  
  
Rose raised an eyebrow, and incredibly she was _flirting_ with him. “I think I’ve got a few ideas,” she said. Jack, in the background, gave off a ripple of amusement — and a certain respect for Rose. He was thinking maybe he’d underestimated her . . .  
  
The Doctor as good as sent a silent scream back at them; this was no joke.  
  
They flinched, but didn’t retreat.  
  
“Fine,” he growled, “Here’s what you’re askin’ for,” and reached up to touch the sides of Rose’s face, fingers neatly aligned on the neural junctions. He leaned down to kiss her, and Rose reached up to meet him without hesitation.  
  
\--  
  
As his lips brushed hers, she was thinking about nothing but how long she’d waited for that moment . . . and then the inside of her head exploded.  
  
She was whipped out of her normal senses and perceptions like a feather swept away on the wind; surrounding her was a vast, fierce darkness — all of it aware, and all of it looking at her.  
  
_This is me, Rose,_ it told her, with the Doctor’s voice. _You’d be binding yourself to this . . ._  
  
Stunned, she fought for equilibrium, and found it, barely, floating on the surface of the Doctor’s thoughts. The depths below her were dark and terrible and she caught hints of things that made her mind reel — awful decisions, made without mercy; harm done to loved ones, even inadvertently; cruelty and harshness; the death of hope; chaos and turmoil dogging every footstep . . . it was like the pit of Hell, opened up beneath her.  
  
She drifted above it, scared and lost . . . and then understood.  
  
_He’s tryin’ to scare me,_ she thought. It was just like her first trip with him — he’d showed her the end of her world, the death of everything she’d known. At the time, she’d thought he was testing her resolve, seeing if she was tough enough to take it. But now, she understood — he’d half wanted her to refuse him, half wanted to drive her clean away from him . . . almost as much as he wanted her to stay.  
  
_Oh, you bastard,_ she thought, with a blend of frustration and love, her heart hurting for him even as she began to get angry. _It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now . . ._  
  
She folded her wings (which, for some reason, she had all of a sudden), and pulled the Doctor in for a deeper kiss (both actions somehow being one and the same), while she dove down into that darkness, blazing light as she went, looking, searching . . .  
  
And there, under the black, terrifying roil, was the Doctor _she_ knew — full of random enthusiasm, deep compassion, unexpected goofiness, and an unquenchable desire to see things made _right_ . . .  
  
The Storm above them was him, and it was genuine . . . but so was this hidden brightness, the self within that spoke directly to her heart.  
  
_I choose this,_ she told him, mind to mind, and no deception possible, _all of it. All of you._  
  
And the kiss ended.  
  
\--  
  
Rose was suddenly back in her body, and the Doctor was looking at her like she’d sprouted a third eye or something, stunned that she’d called his bluff — well, not really a bluff, everything he’d shown her was true. More that she hadn’t run screaming when he’d given her the chance.  
  
His hands dropped limply to her shoulders and rested there.  
  
She laughed. “I didn’t do it before, why would I do it now?” she said as if continuing a conversation — which, so far as she was concerned, she was.  
  
An echoing chuckle from Jack, who still had his hand resting on Rose’s shoulder. “I didn’t catch all of that — not by a long shot . . but enough,” he said.  
  
The Doctor stopped blinking at Rose, and focused on Jack, his eyes narrowing.  
  
“It’s as much your choice, Captain,” he breathed. “The link didn’t start to form ‘till you showed up . . .”  
  
“So it’s all my fault? People keep telling me that, for some reason,” Jack replied, and there was a hard glint beneath his smile.  
  
“The link only forms when all the necessary elements are present. Rose and I were together for a long time without anything like this happenin’. It took _you_ here to get things started . . .”  
  
“Does that mean _I_ get to kiss you now?” Jack asked, voice low and throaty — flirting, as Rose had, but with less humor.  
  
Without speaking, the Doctor reached out to grab Jack’s face — and the necessary contact points — before pulling him in so their lips could touch.  
  
Rose, on the outside this time, felt Jack’s surprise, the Doctor’s angry resolve . . . and then, in an eyeblink, dark amusement from Jack, and he began kissing back in earnest, while the Doctor tried to pull back — only to be caught by Jack’s hand cupping the back of his head and holding him in contact.  
  
The two men broke apart, and Jack was smiling — not a reassuring expression.  
  
“Do not _even_ try to freak me out,” he told the Doctor, their gazes locked. “If you play that game with me, you will _not_ win . . .”  
  
The Doctor simply stared at him . . . but Rose could feel, far down, the first spark of hope take fire.  
  
She wasn’t sure whose feeling it was, and wasn’t sure it mattered.  



	4. Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a very nice title maybe, but that's what it's about . . .

Hope, as tiny and fragile as a candle flame . . . then it guttered, caught in a sudden backlash of sensation. Rose almost whimpered in the back of her throat. ( _No/stay!_ ) she cried out to it, recognizing it now as the Doctor’s emotion. Jack sent out a sense of trying to cup something protectively . . . but then they both stopped short, afraid of interfering and extinguishing what was there.  
  
Rose recognized the cold wind threatening that tiny warm spark — fear. Deep, wrenching fear — fear of feeling pain and of giving it.  
  
The Doctor’s eyes were closed now, his teeth clenched -- caught in the shock of emotions magnified tenfold, Rose was beginning to realize, by their own close proximity. She shot a terrified glance at Jack, who gave her much the same look back, all his fierce confidence from a moment before rapidly evaporating.  
  
Together, they turned back to the Doctor, calling his name with minds and voices.  
  
“I can’t,” he whispered. “It’ll hurt . . .”  
  
“What do you mean, Doctor?” Rose asked him, verbally, since she wasn’t making much sense out of the emotions she was getting.  
  
His eyes opened and he looked at her like she scared him. “I’m a Time Lord, and you’re human. I’ll live for centuries, and you won’t — I’ll lose you both, I couldn’t stay with you . . .” Underneath, a terrible sense of every loss that ever was and ever would be rippled, and then crystallized into a million razor-sharp points . . .  
  
Jack hissed, and started to draw back, but managed to hold his ground. Rose kept perfectly still, and ignored the pain, giving the Doctor her total attention,  
  
“Doctor,” she said, gently, but his gaze was unfocussed, and she repeated herself. “Doctor!” That managed to capture his attention. “We’re here _now_ , we aren’t goin’ anywhere just yet — what you’re talkin’ about, it’s years and years away . . .”  
  
Unexpectedly, the Doctor’s eyes went dark, and he lashed out at her, a deep, sick anger, fuelled by pain. ( _What do you know?_ ) it said.  
  
The frustration and fury that had been bubbling just under the surface for Rose broke through in a sudden incandescent rage that she realized she was pulling from Jack as well as herself — though she was the one articulating it.  
  
“I know _plenty_!” she yelled at him, and he blinked with the volume of it, and the wall of hot color behind the words. “Do you think you’re the only one here who’s ever been hurt? Do you think I don’t know that it _always_ hurts in the end? I held my dad while he died, _you_ showed me how my world gets destroyed, and you thought I didn’t _understand_?”  
  
Jack followed along with her words, providing a dark countermelody of concepts and feelings, giving her strength, agreeing with her every word.  
  
Rose, hardly even knowing what she was doing, reached out and touched the core of the Doctor’s fear, the icy knot of guilt and despair nestled between his hearts. It was terrible and it burned with cold, but she recognized it for what it was.  
  
“It hurt so bad you wanted to die,” she told him. “You tried, even. I know what that feels like, oh yeah . . .”  
  
The tactile memory she called up was appallingly immediate — _the razor blade between her fingertips, held so it rested lightly over her other wrist and the thin thread of blood that held her bound to her body. It would have been easy — she certainly wanted to.  
  
Jimmy’d done quite a number on her, emptied her out from the inside, slowly, deliberately, every word and action breaking her down, making her smaller while he grew . . . And it had been easy for him, because she’d loved him, helped him hurt her. She was shattered, and it felt like she’d never be whole; all she wanted was for the hurt to stop . . .  
  
The only thing that kept her from doing it was thinking of her Mum — and Mickey, and Shireen, and everyone else who had no idea how bad things had really gotten. It would hurt them. And Jimmy would win.  
  
She could get through one more day. And maybe the one after that. If she still needed it, she knew where the razor was. She could always come back for it.  
  
Her decision made, she turned her wrist over, and made a long shallow slice through the meat of her forearm — a promise, and a reminder. She watched the blood bead up in the line of the cut, only a little -- just enough — and nodded.  
  
Later, she’d tell Jackie she’d slipped, silly accident, and laugh at her own clumsiness.  
  
But the thin, white scar on her arm stayed, as a reminder._  
  
Rose turned her arm in the dim, underwater light of the TARDIS, and there it was, the hair-thin white line across the lightly tanned top of her forearm. All three of them looked at it.  
  
The Doctor remained still, frozen in place, but Jack winced, and she felt a surge of horror out of him — horror that she’d almost done that to herself, almost taken herself out of the world before he’d met her.  
  
Then a grim resolve from him ( _Share and share alike . . ._ ), followed by the sensation of gripping a gun — she’d never held a weapon of that type in her life, but she recognized the shape of it in her palm, and the cool feel of a barrel pressed to her temple.  
  
_One squeeze, a flash of something — light, darkness, pain, would it matter? — and all the questions wouldn’t matter anymore, all the memories would go away, along with the pain. But that wouldn’t answer the questions, would it, or atone for the memories . . .? Only a living man could do that.  
  
So, lower the gun, flick the safety on, and keep breathing, for now . . ._  
  
Rose shivered and sent sympathy in Jack’s direction, rubbing her hand against his. The Doctor was shaking, physically, she could feel it, but he’d walled himself off somehow, keeping what he felt from reaching either of his companions.  
  
“And here we are,” Rose summed up. “It hurt, but we kept goin’, and now . . .” She sent warmth down that miraculous, painful link, “ . . . we’re together. Worth waiting for, ‘f you ask me.” She took a slow, deep breath, and felt Jack echo it. A second later, so did the Doctor.  
  
She looked up into the Doctor’s face, and smiled, small and sad. “So yeah, it’ll hurt. Life’ll always hurt, no matter what you do. But no matter how _much_ it hurts, you can keep goin, and in the times between . . . maybe there are things that make hurting worth it. Here an’ now, like you keep sayin’.”  
  
Dead silence for a moment, while the Doctor stared at her like she was something he’d never seen before, and never imagined.  
  
Next to them, Jack let out his breath in a whoosh, and she realized he’d been holding it while she spoke. With that release came a wash of ( _admiration/shock_ ); out loud he said, “Wow. Next time I’m on trial for my life, I want _you_ for my defense lawyer!”  
  
“Next time!” Rose broke out of the moment and bumped him with her shoulder — he was standing that close to her, now — “you _planning_ on doin’ something dumb at our next stop, or is that just wishful thinkin’?” She laughed at him, he grinned back, and the bright emotions running between them washed away the memories of pain and despair like they’d never been.  
  
The Doctor was still silent, his face and feelings locked down and unreadable, when Rose and Jack turned back to him. Rose stopped laughing.  
  
“Doctor — we can’t make you do this,” she said, seriously, and she knew the complete truth of it as she said the words, “ and we don’t wanna _make_ you do anything. But if it means we can stay together, we want this link. We want you.”  
  
She reached up and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand, while Jack reached out to run a fingertip along the side of the Doctor’s neck.  
  
Bare skin on bare skin pulled energy to the surface, like a powerful static charge, building, tense . . . the Doctor closed his eyes one more time, and Rose thought they’d lost him. But then —  
  
“Yes,” the word was almost inaudible, a surprising little squeak.  
  
Rose blinked. “Doctor . . .?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right.  
  
“Yes,” he said, his voice strengthening, though still breathy, “I want this link.”  



	5. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short segment, but one that seemed to naturally stand apart as a transitional piece. "Hurt"'s over, "comfort"'s on it's way . . . ;)

Rose chuckled, partly at the Doctor, partly from the sheer happiness that was starting to spark through her system at his words. “I’d believe you more if you were lookin’ at us when you said that,” she said with affection, brushing his jawline with her fingertips.  
  
The Doctor opened his eyes at that, and she had just a moment to think she’d never seen them a brighter blue than they were right then . . . at which point, he dropped his mental shields.  
  
It was like a sun going nova — and Rose could use that analogy with full understanding, since that was one of the things she’d seen in her travels — but all the light and the force of the shockwave passed through her, harmlessly . . . and through Jack, she could tell. It was as if they were granted special immunity to some great and powerful force.  
  
“So now what?” Jack asked, first to recover, as was typical.  
  
“First thing’s intent,” the Doctor told him, voice as steady as stone. “Second’s touch.” He reached around, and pulled them both in close.  
  
Face pressed against the lapel of the Doctor’s leather coat, Rose let out a long, relieved sigh that seemed to release all the tension she’d ever accumulated in her body over a lifetime. The connection between them was finally open, and she realized how badly the blockage of it had been affecting her.  
  
The Doctor let out his breath in one long happy groan. ( _Thought/never again/but I was wrong . . ._ )  
  
Rose shivered with the sensation of two hearts beating in her ribcage; not a bad thing, in and of itself, but distracting . . . “Will it be like this, from now on?” she asked her voice muffled, but no worry that she’d be misunderstood. Right now, the sensation of connection was glorious, but she could see it getting confusing very quickly, even worse than it had been earlier in the evening.  
  
“S’ only cos the link’s not settled,” the Doctor told her. “We’ve been fightin’ it, me cos I knew what it was, you two cos you _didn’t_ know what it was. It’ll ease — one night together should be all it takes . . .”  
  
“Mmm, I like the sound of that,” Jack purred, and reached around to catch the Doctor’s mouth in a slow, sensual kiss . . . returned with interest.  
  
Rose reflected that she might not make it through a full night like that, even as she squeezed her arms around the others as tightly as she could in approval.  
  
They broke apart, and there was good-natured amusement from the Doctor, sharp, but suffused with warmth from the accepted link. “Trust you t’ think of that first. _Sleep,_ that’s what we need. Time spent close, without reservations. Y’ can’t sleep easy with someone y’ don’t accept, and that’s what feeds the link . . .”  
  
“That and _touch_ , you said,” Rose told him, and she reached up to turn his head in her direction . . . except he was already turning, and they were kissing, long and easy, his mouth cool and relaxed against hers, and it was . . . God, it wasn't just the link, she was pretty sure it was what she’d ( _wanted for ages_ ) she told him and Jack both, without using the words she’d have to break the kiss to speak.  
  
“Not the link makin’ me feel that,” she said, when she has air again.  
  
“Nah. It can’t _make_ you feel anythin’. It builds on what’s already there, gives it an outlet, more’re less,” the Doctor told her, seriously.  
  
“I know what I’m feeling,” Jack said, and nuzzled the angle between the Doctor’s neck and shoulder, making the Time Lord close his eyes briefly. To his credit, the Doctor’s voice was mostly steady when he replied.  
  
“S’ a natural side effect of this level of attraction,” he said, “It bleeds over to the physical as a matter of course . . .”  
  
“So we won’t be spending the night _just_ sleeping?” Jack asked him, grinning crookedly.  
  
“Didn’t say that, did I?” the Doctor retorted, and pulled them both in again for a tight hug. Even so, they could feel his ear-to ear grin.  



	6. Touching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this sequence over two chapters, since that will keep it in line with the rest of the story.

They didn’t make it any further than Jack’s room.  
  
The Doctor’d had some destination in mind, deep in the TARDIS, and been guiding them there (somewhat slowly, since there were frequent pauses along the way), but as they’d reached the familiar door, Jack had stopped them.  
  
“I’m just gonna duck in for a moment,” he told them, “pick up . . .”  
  
He never finished the sentence; he fell silent and gaped for a moment after opening the door . . . then leaned against the doorframe and began whooping with laughter.  
  
Rose and the Doctor, who had been sharing a long, slow, promissory kiss, broke off and looked at each other, then went to see what Jack was reacting to.  
  
For a moment, they gaped, too. Jack’s room had nearly doubled in size, mostly to accommodate a genuinely enormous bed.  
  
“Jack!” Rose said, when she could speak again, her tone and her thoughts mixed with amusement and admonishment.  
  
Jack pulled in a breath and sniggered. “I _swear_ I had nothing to do with that,“ he said, waving at the gigantic mattress. “You guys’ve seen my room before — it was just a single bed. Guess _some_ one approves.” He grinned as he stroked the doorframe he was leaning against, and was rewarded with a slight change in pitch to the TARDIS’s usual background hum.  
  
“Guess, so,” the Doctor said, grinning, and rubbing the other side of the doorframe. “Think I can take a hint,” he added with a shrug and strode into the room. Jack followed, and Rose shook her head as she followed, too.  
  
“You, take a hint,” she said. “That’s a first.”  
  
The Doctor looked over his shoulder at her with a small half-smile very different from his usual goofy grin. “First of several firsts, tonight,” he replied in a tone of voice that made her knees go weak in a way that had nothing to do with empathic links.  
  
Jack had gone to the bedside table, which remained the same, since beyond the bed’s expansion nothing had changed, and rummaged in the top drawer. He came back out with a tube of familiar design, which he tossed up in the air and caught again — a cheerful gesture.  
  
“That’s what I was looking for,” he said, matter-of-factly, and set the tube on the table. “We might be wanting that.”  
  
The mundanity of that tube shook a portion of Rose’s brain awake, and made her realize that they were _really doing_ this. The Doctor was already sitting on the edge of the bed unlacing his boots.  
  
“Erm,” she began, and was rewarded with the attention of both men. “Sorry, it’s the way I was raised — I’m on the Pill right now, and my last checkup back home was clean . . .”  
  
“Vasectomy,” Jack volunteered easily, catching her drift. “Time Patrol standard issue — can’t have people being their own grandfathers by accident . . . and I never got it reversed. So far as I know no health problems for me . . .” He began kicking off his shoes, and Rose, heartened, sat down next to the Doctor and began working on her own shoes.  
  
“Oof.” The Doctor pulled off his second boot. “Both of you are fine. We all are. Nothing showed up on the last med scans I gave you.”  
  
Rose straightened all at once, startled. “You were checking . . .?”  
  
“Not particularly. Standard stuff, th’ med system does it automatically . . . And, for the record, I’m not physiologically compatible with you, so no worries there . . .”  
  
Rose blinked as a whole new potential stumbling block presented itself to her imagination. Just what _was_ under that jumper and jeans . . .?  
  
Dark amusement from the Doctor. “’Spect you’ll be findin’ out shortly,” he told her, skinning out of his leather coat and tossing it carelessly aside. Another ripple of amusement at her reaction to his phrasing. “You’ll notice I said _physiologically_ , not anatomically,” he told her, relenting a little. “Chemicals, not equipment. _That’s_ the same.”  
  
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said, from behind them. With his shoes off, he’d rolled up onto the bed and crawled around behind them. “I’ve always liked tinkering round with tools . . .” He kissed Rose on the side of the neck, then did the same to the Doctor — who closed his eyes and reached up to stroke Jack’s hair in return.  
  
That was another momentary wake-up moment for Rose — she was about to get naked with two blokes at the same time, and they weren’t going to be ignoring each other . . . and shouldn’t that feel strange? Because it didn’t; it felt very warm, and very safe, and incredibly _right_ . . .  
  
Both of them caught her feelings, and looked at her with dark, lazy speculation — pleased and sexy and . . . oooooh. Desire rippled and reverberated through the link, and they were all caught in it for a moment . . . but it wasn’t as distracting and disorienting as before, even though it was no less intense.  
  
“The link’s startin’ to settle,” the Doctor said after a moment. “The more contact we have, the more it’ll reset our perceptions, get us back in our own bodies . . .” he broke off in a chuckle, since Jack was already skinning out of his shirt. “. . . so to speak,” he finished.  
  
The rest of the clothing in the room quickly followed suit, each newly-exposed bit of skin getting immediate attention. The only pause came when Jack discovered Rose’s tattoo. She heard his exclamation, then his hands were on her hips, gently turning her pelvis more towards the light, and so the Doctor could see.  
  
“Why, Rose!” Jack said, teasing, “I never knew you were that kind of girl. . .” his fingertips brushed the golden rose at the base of her spine, located just between the two symmetrical dimples in her musculature.  
  
She shivered, and grinned, “We’ll, s’ my name — seemed only right. When Shireen got hers, I decided to keep her company.” She grimaced, momentarily distracted by memory. “Now, though, I’d get it in a less painful place . . .” Needles in thin skin over hard bone wasn’t particularly fun, she’d learned.  
  
“Poor baby,” Jack said, mostly teasing, and leaned forward to brush his lips over the tattoo in a make-it-better gesture that had her forgetting all _about_ past discomfort . . .  
  
More touching, skin on skin, every contact a warm relief, full of shared exploration. The link flared and reverberated in counterpoint, becoming firmer and more familiar by the moment.  
  
Somehow or other, Jack and the Doctor decided on a “ladies first” policy and began concentrating on Rose. She would have protested the stereotype, if they hadn’t managed to completely take her breath away with their first combined attack and keep her gasping after that.  
  
Without really knowing how, she found herself leaning back against Jack, who was propped up against the headboard, with her between his legs, her shoulders pressed against his chest and his hardness pressed into the small of her back, while the Doctor lay between her legs and did astonishing things to her with nothing more than his fingertips.  
  
Even as she rode the sensations as best she could, Rose was reminded of how the Doctor had handled a certain musical instrument, in a bunker far away. Just about the only really good memory she had of that visit to von Statten’s underground museum was that magical moment when the Doctor had brought an alien artifact to singing life with just the sure, gentle touch of his hands. Even at the time, with armed guards all around, it had been one of the most sensual things she’d ever seen . . . and now that same cool, sure, gentle touch was on her, finding nerves and reactions she’d never known she’d possessed.  
  
He wasn’t missing a note on _her_ , that was for certain.  
  
As the Doctor worked, Jack reached round and caressed her breasts, adding to the pleasure and sensation, until she felt positively surrounded by their affection, embraced and cherished. The link fed her their pleasure at pleasing her; she sensed the Doctor’s grin as he watched the expression change on her face in response to his touch, while Jack gently rocked his hips against her, sliding himself against the sweat-slick small of her back in a slow, sensual grind.  
  
When they finally pushed her over the edge, Time stopped, and she flew . . . while the Doctor’s gentle, knowing touch kept her in the air for longer than she thought would ever have been possible.  
  
When the wash of pleasure finally eased, she collapsed back against Jack, catching her breath in deep, satisfied gasps, her nerves still tingling from the most intense and sustained orgasm she’d ever experienced. _And that was just for_ starters, was all she could think for a dazed moment.  
  
Jack wrapped his arms around her upper body in an enveloping hug, and kissed her on the temple — a light, affectionate peck that spoke his feelings more clearly than a dozen more sensual gestures . . . though the pressure in the small of her back hadn’t eased up any, either.  
  
Rose opened her eyes, and there was the Doctor, propped up on his elbows between her legs, grinning up at her in a smug, goofy, borderline maniacal way.  
  
“ _Thought_ I remembered where everything was,” he told her, pleased as the cat that got the canary.  
  



	7. Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm learning that not only do I find smut difficult to write, it takes for-ever . . . in the interests of getting some Friday night fun out to everyone, a rather short (but, I hope, enjoyable) chapter to keep the ball rolling, as it were . . . ;)

“Yeah, I’ll say,” Rose told him. “Wow. Won’t hear me makin’ fun of your moves again . . .”  
  
If possible, the Doctor grinned even more widely.  
  
“Mmmmm, wow, indeed,” Jack mumbled against her neck. “Those colors were something.”  
  
Rose had no idea what she’d been projecting through the link — in fact, the last five minutes or so were distinctly fuzzy — but she reached back over her shoulder to rub Jack’s neck at the same time she reached forward with her other hand to caress the Doctor’s cheek. “Glad you liked ‘em,” she said — and then giggled. “Y’ like my tattoo, too, I can tell . . .”  
  
Jack, surprised, puffed laughter into her hair, while the Doctor looked confused, but tried not to.  
  
That was when Rose realized something, and removed her hand from the Doctor’s cheek. She held it up, frowning and flexing her fingers. Then she sighed happily.  
  
“S’ workin’ — my hand’s mine again.”  
  
The Doctor sat up and scooched forward, taking her hand and kissing the palm. “Yeah, works that way — just gotta remind your nerves where y’ live.”  
  
Even given the slightly awkward position — sitting between Rose’s legs, with his legs canted outward to hook over hers, he was suddenly, the most graceful, elegant, and thoroughly desirable thing Rose had ever seen, with his long, lean runner’s build. Didn’t hurt that he was clearly in an interested mood . . .  
  
Jack growled happily in her ear, and she was treated to another nudge against her tattoo and a pulse of an idea down the now-stabilizing link.  
  
Rose laughed, agreeing, and slid her pelvis forward so she could bump against the Doctor, and arched her back to rub herself along the underside of his hardness. He gasped and pressed against her.  
  
“S’ how are your nerves?” she asked, coyly, before she and Jack pounced by mutual agreement.  
  
The Doctor had been right — there was absolutely nothing un-human about him. . . well, except for the lack of a bellybutton — a design feature he promised to explain later, to Rose and Jack’s temporary amusement, the two of them having heard that statement many times in _entirely_ different circumstances. And he felt strangely cool to the touch -- lower body temperature, he explained, swallowing the last few words as Jack nibbled on his earlobe to head off what sounded like an incipient lecture.  
  
And there was the odd, pleasantly-organic scent and flavor of his skin, somewhere between clean sweat and honey. But all the important bits were as expected — and very nice — so Rose wasn't about to complain over the details.  
  
She’d fantasized for a long time about exploring the Doctor’s body . . . and she found it was even more fun with a friend, as she and Jack together made sure the Doctor’s nerve endings got all the attention they needed.  
  
The moment when he finally slid into her in one smooth motion, their bodies interlocking easily and perfectly, was better than she’d ever imagined it could be. They encountered a momentary difficulty when he set up his rhythm — it was slightly odd, syncopated, and she couldn’t manage to match it; instead she just threw them both off when she tried. So, she concentrated on giving him the best angle possible, and the benefits of her internal muscle tone. _I’ll work it out in time,_ she thought — and then felt a warm shiver of delight with the knowledge that they _would_ be doing this again . . .  
  
Jack had a hand between them, massaging where they were joined — something the Doctor certainly was enjoying. Rose was enjoying it, too, though it was still too soon for her to be approaching her own release again. Not that she was disappointed. If anything, she was glad not to be distracted for this first, magical time with the Doctor.  
  
( _My Doctor,_ ) she sent purring through the link, a rich, deep indigo. She reached down and touched his hipbones gently, trailing her fingers up his flanks, feather light, so that his skin tingled into gooseflesh in her wake.  
  
( _Our Doctor,_ ) Jack echoed, leaning forward to kiss the Doctor between the shoulderblades, just as Rose’s thumbs found his hardened nipples and flicked them. The Doctor arched his back, gasping from near sensory overload . . . and the link exploded with his feelings.  
  
He’d been shielding, Rose realized, as sensations bright and dark swept through her — physical pleasure, love, the terrible darkness that had been at the back of his mind since his people died ( _the last/alone/forever . . ._ ), the growing warmth and light of the link filling that emptiness, bridging broken areas, warming, healing . . .  
  
When he came, Rose arched into his pleasure as if it had been her own, sending all her happiness back through the link, to blend with Jack’s emotions, in a single, enveloping whirlpool.  
  
They ended with the Doctor pressed atop Rose, kissing her deeply, while Jack ran affectionate hands along the Doctor’s back and Rose’s thigh. Without breaking the kiss, Rose reached out to catch and hold Jack’s hand affectionately with her own — then released him and held out her hand, palm up. Chortling, Jack gave her a congratulatory high five.  
  
The Doctor broke the kiss, and turned his head to look sidelong at Jack. “ _That_ was unnecessary,” he said, in a tone approaching his usual acid — which only made the two humans laugh. Rose wrapped her legs around the Doctor’s waist and squeezed, prompting another kiss.  
  
Jack flopped down to lie alongside them. Rose turned her head, and he was grinning widely, eyes sparkling and skin flushed, obviously very aroused. He sighed.  
  
“You two are so cute, I’m tempted to say I never want to come between you — but I’d be lying,” he said.  
  
Rose rolled her head back and began laughing again, while the Doctor levered himself up and gave Jack a half-amused, half-challenging glare.  
  
“That can be arranged,” he said, voice deep and rough, and leaned over to kiss Jack breathless where he lay.  



	8. Bridging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smut concludes -- one more chapter to go . . . :)

Rose had to admire Jack’s restraint as she and the Doctor turned their shared attention to him. She would’ve figured him to be the type to drive right in, as it were, but he was revealing a surprising tendency towards slow, sustained sensuality. So far, he’d been happy to play a supporting role — and thanks to the link, she could tell exactly how much he’d been enjoying himself doing so. But he wasn’t going to be staying in the background any longer, not if she had her way with him . . .  
  
Sharing Jack with the Doctor was every bit as fun as sharing the Doctor with Jack; Rose was really beginning to appreciate the value of having two mouths and two sets of hands working in concert.  
  
And Jack was worth the attention — they might tease him for obsessing about his looks, but all his time in the gym really paid off: he was gorgeous, all over. And, better than that, he was _himself_ , with his amazing capacity for enjoyment, his dry humor and generous heart. He’d added so much to their lives, it felt fabulous to give something back.  
  
With surprising ease, Jack guided them into exactly the right positions, himself between the two of them — and then proceeded to demonstrate the depth of his lovemaking skills by managing to pleasure his partners with fine concentration even as they both did their best to drive him over the edge.  
  
Rose was surprised by the speed and force of her second climax of the evening, nearly overwhelmed by the sensation of Jack working on her from inside and out — all while he maintained a smooth, even pace, _and_ reached behind himself to work on the Doctor one-handed.  
  
_He wasn’t just blowing smoke, he’s good . . ._ was Rose’s next coherent thought, to Jack’s pleased amusement -- but that was when she first became aware Jack’s own response was . . . stalled somehow. Something in him refused to loosen and give itself over completely to what they were doing with either their bodies or their minds.  
  
The Doctor sensed it, and reached up to gently rest the fingertips of one hand against Jack’s temple, mirroring the gesture with his other hand on Rose’s temple, without breaking the flow of their movements together.  
  
Suddenly, a second connection opened up in concert with the link, going beyond emotions and concepts, into thoughts and images.  
  
Jack didn’t resist, though he could have. Looking into him, Rose could see the blockage clearly — Jack Harkness was a fabrication, something unreal, a defensive shell. Sex had become part of that defensive shell, a tool to be used as necessary, with no particular emotional resonance. A pleasurable piece of armor, definitely, but he’d worked so hard to cut off his deep emotions from his outer reality he now found himself unable to rejoin the two. His defensive disconnection had become something closer to amputation, sealed off with years worth of scar tissue.  
  
It felt like a con, the worst con, to be here with these two amazing people, unable to give them anything real, not even himself. He was as good as lying to the ones who trusted him most. . .  
  
The Doctor snaked his head around Jack’s on the side away from where he held the telepathic connection in place with his fingertips. “Oh, you feel plenty real,” he whispered into Jack’s ear, and bit down delicately on the outer rim of cartilage for emphasis. Jack shivered in response.  
  
“You’re real to me,” Rose added, reaching up to run her fingertips along his jawline. “You weren’t lying earlier, when you accepted the link — you’ve never lied on anything that matters . . . ( _My Captain . . ._ ) She reached out to him with her affection, to help him bridge the gap he felt in himself.  
  
( _Our Captain,_ ) the Doctor echoed, in wry, conscious imitation of that earlier affirmation . . . but the humor was supported by a vast, luminous presence, like a stormwall suddenly and unexpectedly backlit by the sun. If the Doctor had been impressive in his earlier pain and loneliness, he was overwhelming now, with the link open and accepted.  
  
Together, they soothed and warmed Jack’s internal scars, softening them so they could heal.  
  
In the face of their merciless affection, physical and mental, the last of Jack’s resistance melted. The distance between his inner and outer selves bridged suddenly, as an electric spark will jump a gap, his heart’s release reached a fraction of a second before his body’s.  
  
As Jack’s taut muscles finally relaxed, and he slumped forward to rest on one forearm, trying not to squash Rose, something intangible slipped, slid . . . and snicked cleanly into place, like a well-fitted key turning the tumblers of a lock.  
  
The Doctor rolled off of Jack, grabbing him by the waist and pulling him over to lie between himself and Rose, who immediately snuggled up to Jack, kissing his throat affectionately, while the Doctor reached around to wrap one arm around both their waists.  
  
None of them spoke — there was no need for words, with the link finally settled into place. All of them neatly occupied their own bodies, yet were aware of the others’; feelings flowed easily, the long, slow buildup of tension finally eased. With that friction gone, the three of them fitted together as smoothly as pieces of a puzzle, interlocked in such a way as to complement and strengthen each other, forming a rare and perfect balance.  
  
It was only now that they could tell how badly the growing link had worn at them, a constant irritation that had kept them from resting properly, and left them exhausted in its passing.  
  
The Doctor nuzzled the back of Jack’s neck, and ran his fingers along the curve of Rose’s waist.  
  
“Now for what we _really_ need,” he said aloud, his voice blurry and happy. “Sleep!”  
  
Rose had enough energy to make a faint, amused snort before they all dropped off within seconds of each other.  
  



	9. Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pleasant morning-after -- and more info on the link itself, for us and Our Heroes.

The Doctor snapped from sleeping to wakefulness with the speed of a bubble popping — it was normal for him, as was the immediate knowledge of how much time had passed.  
  
_That_ , however, was unusual — a full eight hours, twenty-one minutes, and fifteen seconds (rounding up). It was nearly twice as long as he tended to sleep, when he slept. He _had_ been worn down . . .  
  
Also unusual was the line of not-unpleasant warmth pressed against his back, fever-heat wrapped in a human skin — Jack’s he realized. Rose was there, too, of course, on the other side of Jack; even if he hadn’t been aware of her presence through the now-stable link they shared, he could hear her. She was speaking softly, apparently to avoid waking him, since she and Jack were both awake.  
  
“One,” she said. Pause. “Four.” Pause. “None . . .”  
  
“Hark,” Jack commented with lazy good humor. “Sleeping Beauty awakes.”  
  
“Mm,” Rose murmured in agreement.  
  
The Doctor hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle, but he hadn’t needed to for them to sense the change in his mental state.  
  
He rolled over to face the others. Jack was lying on his back, Rose curled against his side with her head resting on his chest and Jack’s arm around her shoulders. Both of them had their eyes closed. Jack’s free arm was propped up at the elbow, and he was extending his fingers in random patterns.  
  
“Two,” Rose said, matching the number of fingers Jack was holding up.  
  
“What _are_ you doing?” the Doctor asked, sounding more morning-grumpy than he’d intended.  
  
“I’m tellin’ Jack how many fingers he’s holdin’ up,” Rose said.  
  
The Doctor reached up and rubbed his gritty eyes. Nothing like literalism first thing in the morning. “Let me rephrase: _why_ are you doin’ that?”  
  
“We’re testin’ out this link,” Rose said.  
  
“Might as well find out what it’s good for,” Jack added.  
  
Humans — typical. When confronted with something new, it either scared them into a panicky fight-or-flight response . . . or else they swarmed right over the top of it, trying to understand everything about it like the clever, curious monkeys they were. Normally, that latter response was one of the things he found most endearing about the human race.  
  
However, he’d never had to deal with it in bed before . . .  
  
Rose was continuing, “We tried thinkin’ of numbers and guessin’ ‘em, but that didn’t work . . .”  
  
“I could tell she was _thinking_ of a number, really hard, but I couldn’t tell what it was . . ." Jack continued. Rose responded with a strong pulse of fuchsia, a feeling equivalent to a frown of concentration. “Yeah, like that . . . “  
  
“That was twenty-five, by the way,” Rose commented, irrelevantly, then went on. “We tried pictures next — but we couldn’t see ‘em. We could only feel what the pictures _meant_ t’ each other — like if a memory was happy or sad, or if it was nothin’ special.”  
  
“Well, you wouldn’t get numbers, or pictures, or language. This type of link doesn’t work on that level. ‘S all processed on a nonverbal level, like facial expressions, or body language,” the Doctor told them, leaning a little more into Jack’s enticing warmth and letting his eyelids slide shut again. “It’s empathy, not telepathy.”  
  
“Telepathy’s the other thing you were doin’ with us?” Rose asked, seeking confirmation. “When you touched our faces?”  
  
A slight shudder of memory (whose was not clear, but it was quite possibly mutual) at the intensity of that contact, especially layered on top of the link — made for a full 3-D, surround-sound self-sharing experience, that did. Not bad, but definitely not for everyday . . .  
  
“Mmhm,” the Doctor agreed.  
  
“Weird telepathy,” Jack commented. “Nothing like what we got trained in for the Patrol . . .”  
  
“Different species do things differently,” the Doctor pointed out, resting his cheek on the point of Jack’s shoulder. Really, humans made marvelous bed-warmers. Better than a hot water bottle — bigger, and not all rubbery . . .  
  
Rose chuckled deep in her throat. “I can still feel some of what you’re feeling, though -- physically, I mean. I can feel how many fingers Jack’s holding up by listening to his body. And you’re like a big cat right now, curling up against Jack ‘cos he’s warm.”  
  
“Not just ‘cos he’s warm,” the Doctor told her. “He’s soft, too.”  
  
“Hey, what am I, a giant teddy bear all of a sudden?”  
  
“Anyway,” the Doctor continued, as if Jack hadn’t spoken, “a somatic component’s pretty common with a link like this — ‘specially when we’re all touching. Gets weaker with distance, usually. Whole thing gets weaker with distance.”  
  
“So, what can we expect out of this in the future, oh all-seeing psionic expert?” Jack asked. His tone of voice was dry, but he shifted around so his arm could go under the Doctor’s head and around his shoulders, pulling the Time Lord in closer.  
  
“When we’re close — this. When we aren’t touching, similar, but not so strong. We’ll be able to sense each other over fairly long distances — couple of klicks, at least, but probably not through temporal displacement. We’ll heal faster when we’re together, and we’ll be able to share mental energy some . . .”  
  
“What sort a’ mental energy?” Rose asked, curious.  
  
“Offensive and defensive modes -- shielding capacity, psi bursts, things like that,” Jack responded, unexpectedly, giving off the sense of feeling around speculatively inside his own head.  
  
“What, fighting?” Rose asked, frowning, with a haze of dubious ocher as an accent.  
  
( _Human nature/always violent_ ,) the Doctor sent, irritated. “Yeah, like fighting. _Also_ like upping concentration, pattern recognition, and things that’re actually useful . . .”  
  
“Take it you’ve never been in a psi fight, then,” Jack said, dryly. “Firepower counts, there.”  
  
The Doctor didn’t move a muscle physically, but in a heartbeat it was as if his side of the bed dropped off into a fathomless abyss filled with dark, forbidding thunderheads, their anvil-shaped tops towering far above, overarching the two humans . . . not threatening, not yet -- but very, very present.  
  
“All right, already, you’ve been in a psi fight,” Jack said, without fear — but with a touch of amusement at the overstatement.  
  
“Y’ think?” the Doctor told him, and neatly packed the incipient deluge back inside himself. He shifted to press a little more efficiently against Jack’s warmth-radiating side.  
  
“That’s something, though — we need to teach Rose a little self-defense. Now the link’s in place, she’s wide open . . .” Jack continued.  
  
“I am?” Rose asked, startled by the thought.  
  
“You’re not s’ armor-plated yourself, anymore, Captain,” the Doctor told him.  
  
“Well, they never taught us how to deal with something like an empathic link showing up and disrupting our balance,” Jack said. “Y’ don’t exactly go reproducing this sort of thing in a classroom setting.” He gave the others a distinctly sensual stroke through the link — then laughed. “At least _I_ never got so lucky . . . Anyway, first thing for today, then — psychic self-defense.”  
  
“Maybe not _first_ thing,” Rose told him. “I want a shower, at least.” With a sudden burst of youthful energy, she rolled out of the bed and bounced to her feet. “Dibs!”  
  
“G’wan, then,” Jack told her, lazily, curling a little closer to the Doctor, feigning indifference.  
  
Rose stretched, arms above her head and eyes closed . . . and sensed that she was suddenly getting much more of her companions’ attention.  
  
Grinning, she relaxed, sent a sultry wink their way — they were both watching her, even the Doctor, who’d given up his lazy-cat mode for something more overtly predatory — and turned to walk towards Jack’s bathroom.  
  
Once upon a time, there’d been a single shared bathroom down the hall, but when Jack and Rose had begun butting heads over the availability of hot water and shower access, they’d unexpectedly found small, personal bathrooms branching off of their bedrooms — the TARDIS’s way of removing a headache for herself (and, not so incidentally, the Doctor, who needed to take showers, too). They’d had the good grace to be briefly embarrassed — but not too embarrassed to make full use of their new accommodations after that.  
  
Rose took her time getting there, putting a little extra roll and sway into her walk to improve the view, smirking as she went. Her deliberately provocative manner lasted until she reached the bathroom door and opened it. She stopped . . . and then the tease went out of her, to be replaced by genuine amusement. She leaned in the doorway and laughed.  
  
In response to the questioning impulses coming from the bed, she looked over her shoulder and said, “The TARDIS definitely approves. There’s a new shower in here that’s big enough for all three of us at once, I think.” She stepped through the doorway, and called out, as if in an afterthought, “Anyone wanna help me try it out?”  
  
Jack and the Doctor were across the room before the first water hit the floor of the stall.  



End file.
